5.5 Gallon Photo Log

[Purrbox]

Perfect Blue -

This is a 5.5 Gallon Tank (take a look at the subject ) with a 2x18 Watt Coralife Fixture. Very High Light.

The two plants that were on the left were Rotala Rotundifolia in the back and Micranthemum Umbrosum in the front. Both do well with Medium or better lighting.

 

[rich311k]

Man your tanks just keep getting prettier and prettier.

 

[Purrbox]

Here's a new pic that was taken on 6/29/2006. As you can see the Anubias decided to bloom underwater. There's some close ups in my Anubias Flowering Thread.

I'm happy to report that my revised dosing schedule appears to have significantly reduced the amount of Green Spot Algae and algae in general in this tank. I switched to dosing Micros and Macros on alternating days, which has reduced the signs of Iron deficiency without increasing the Micros dose amount. In addition I decided to try dosing at the recommended levels for EI. This reduced the amount of Potassium and increased the amount of Phosphorus that I'm dosing. Nitrates are being dosed at roughly the same rate, although I've eliminated the dose right after the water change since my tap water has high levels of Nitrates.

Without really having an aquascape in mind for this tank originally, it's starting to come together nicely. I think with a few tweaks as the plants fill in, I'm going to like the way everything looks together. Still thinking about adding some more driftwood though.

 

[Glenc]

Very nice. I think this is my favorite of your tanks as well. I would leave it as is, it's looks just beautiful, going to get even better as it fills in a bit more with just the plants.

 

[Purrbox]

While snapping a few pics of the tanks tonight I managed to get a really nice one of the Hydrocotyle Sibthropioides pearling.

 

[Lonewolfblue]

Pretty cool.....

 

[travis simonson]

Those pearling pics are so nice Joy. H. sibthoripiodes looks so cool when it's happy. Nice work. In fact nice work on all of your plants. You're not keeping anything easy to grow. Your tank is akin to the back twisting triple somersault degree of difficulty

 

[Purrbox]

Well there are still some algae issues so I've tweaked my dosing a little bit more. We'll see how things go. Mostly importantly some new pics. One of the Pygmy Cories was posing so I took the opportunity to get a great closeup.

 

[azn_fishy55]

How many inches of substrate do you have in there?

 

[Purrbox]

Somewhere between 2-3". There was closer to 3-4" when it was still set up as a hex tank. I've been thinking about adding some Turface MVP to the mix to up the level closer to 3", but just haven't gotten around to it yet.

 

[Glenc]

Very, very nice. You would never know that that tank is only 5.5 gallons.

 

[Purrbox]

It's pretty obvious that the Ranunculus Papulentus and Hydrocotyle Sibthropoides love this tank. I'm finding that I have to prune them nearly as often as I do the faster growing stem plants like Rotala Rotundifolia in my 10 gallon. Not to mention the Anubias Nana that's sent out it's second bud. The Marsilea Minuta is filling in very nicely. I think that once its filled in I'm going to steal some for the foreground in my 10 gallon.

The Ammania sp. "Bonsai" has started to look a little ragged, and I suspect that I probably cut back the dosing a bit to far. Upping it back up for a happy medium and hopefully it will come back strong for me. I've also decided to stop the Excel dosing since it doesn't seem to be helping much and the Corkscrew Val started it's melting act. Hopefully I noticed soon enough that it will spring back with little to no problems.

I've completely lost the Rotala Magenta and the Rotala Pusilla isn't doing much one way or the other. The Rotala Wallichii is spreading at a moderate rate but not getting the nice pick coloration I was expecting. The Rotala sp. "Vietnam" is growing very very slowly.

I had actually removed practically all of the Hemianthus Micranthemoides "Erect" in frusteration as it never looked any good. Suprisingly a couple of the small pieces that I missed are growing back in and look extremely nice. I'm thinking that I may just need to prune it back a little more severly to keep it looking nice.

Since the Rotalas aren't doing what I'd hoped for, I'm trying to pick a new stem plant for the back left corner. While doing some plant research earlier today, I stumbled across Limnophila Aromatic. Anybody familiar with this plant have some feedback as to how well suited it would be for a nano?

 

[azn_fishy55]

Limnophila aromatica has large leaves and it would make the nano look much smaller,IMO.

 

[Purrbox]

Thanks for the input azn_fishy55. Guess the search for a suitable plant continues.

I may have figured out a large part of the more recent problems with this tank. I was cleaning out some of the more tattered leaves and noticed that the tubing for the water pump seemed rather loose. It turns out that the tubing was a touch to short and was sliding off so that it was barely connected. This minimized the water movement in the tank and could have dropped the CO2 levels. I replaced it with a slightly longer piece, so it won't be able to slip off any more.

 

[azn_fishy55]

A plant I would suggest would be Lobelia cardinalis "dwarf", the only source I know is through aquariumplants.com in the terrarium plants section they have lobelia cardinalis grown emersed but I have no idea if its the dwarf variation.

 

[czcz]

Watch out though, it's said that some sites sell an L. cardinalis that won't survive submerged.

 

[Purrbox]

While playing with a new camera attachment tonight, I was able to get a couple of good shot of the plants in this tank. Please try to ignore the algae, it's clearing up slowly but surely.

 

[Jchillin]

Great looking pics...the algae doesn't look bad at all either. What kind of cam are you using?

 

[Purrbox]

It's a Nikon Coolpix 5700. For the last two shots it was used with a 52mm Adapter Tube (the new camera toy) and a 4x Close Up Filter.

 

[Lonewolfblue]

Cool pics..... Doing great...